ex-nuke:hardinparamedic: And to think, here I've been thinking that shooting at an aircraft, especially with the intent to shoot it down, has been a federal crime since we've had aviation laws on the book.

It's going to be funny when some nutjob decides to try to do that, and either has it crash into a house and kill someone, or has the bullet come down right into a kid's head. Not ha-ha funny, but "Dumbass" funny.

If a 29 ounce battery powered drone crashes into your house and kills someone you need to seriously consider some structural upgrades. The only drones that operate close enough to the ground to be shot down with small arms are the little Remote Control toy helicopters. The kind that have already been used to harass hunters, peek through windows with digital cameras and generally spy on people for thrills.

I'm not keen on cops and the military using drones, but the ones you mentioned are what I'll be shooting down, should I see one.

hubiestubert:hardinparamedic: And to think, here I've been thinking that shooting at an aircraft, especially with the intent to shoot it down, has been a federal crime since we've had aviation laws on the book.

It's going to be funny when some nutjob decides to try to do that, and either has it crash into a house and kill someone, or has the bullet come down right into a kid's head. Not ha-ha funny, but "Dumbass" funny.

Or starts a forest fire that consumes a fair chunk of timber land. Yeah, that's going to make these folks SUPER popular...

Deer Trail is in the eastern plains of Colorado. No trees. Even North Dakotans drive through and go "God, this place looks desolate."

So shooting at a drone is not the brightest idea considering that your bullets which are going up still have to come back down somewhere at a pretty high velocity...

So how about radio controlled aircraft in general designed to more safely disable drones? All you'd really need to knock most of them out of the air is to use a length of cord to foul a prop. Make it a net if you're feeling fancy. Could be a new (clandestine) hobby for citizens...

hardinparamedic:dittybopper: Now, if you wanted to get *REAL* fancy, you could arm a large-ish radio control model aircraft with a semi-auto shotgun and equip it with one of those real-time cameras, and go hunting drones like a half-assed WWII fighter pilot. That would be pretty safe: The shot would pose no serious threat to anyone on the ground.

IIRC, that's also illegal according to the FAA for a civilian aircraft to carry air-to-air weaponry.

LouDobbsAwaaaay:Did they dust off their paranoid, "Shoot Down U.N. Black Helicopters" bill from the Clinton years, and just to a search/replace with "Drone"? Paranoid white people are so predictable it's sad.

As long as you aren't dressed like a deer you're probably safe, though.

mongbiohazard:So how about radio controlled aircraft in general designed to more safely disable drones? All you'd really need to knock most of them out of the air is to use a length of cord to foul a prop. Make it a net if you're feeling fancy. Could be a new (clandestine) hobby for citizens...

Or you could just use a slingshot and a fishing reel. I use one to put up antennas, and you can get pretty accurate with it, and the projectile isn't going to go that far.

But again, you can fire some #6 shot at a drone and no one on the ground will be in any serious danger.

dittybopper:mongbiohazard: So how about radio controlled aircraft in general designed to more safely disable drones? All you'd really need to knock most of them out of the air is to use a length of cord to foul a prop. Make it a net if you're feeling fancy. Could be a new (clandestine) hobby for citizens...

Or you could just use a slingshot and a fishing reel. I use one to put up antennas, and you can get pretty accurate with it, and the projectile isn't going to go that far.

But again, you can fire some #6 shot at a drone and no one on the ground will be in any serious danger.

Until a few hundred pounds of drone crashes into their living room. But up until that point, they're perfectly safe.

mutterfark:Serious question, could you bring them down with some kind of radio "jammer"?

Many of modern drones use spread spectrum transmissions for the control links. Very difficult to completely jam without the right equipment. Several kilowatts of broad band noise in the right frequency band directed at the aircraft would likely make them want to operate it elsewhere.

As for bringing them down, some of the more sophisticated devices are set up with a fail safe to return to a specific set of coordinates in the event of a loss of the control link. So interrupting the link is likely to just run them off.

It is unlikely that someone would get caught unless they were stupid enough to brag about it or someone rats them out. The folks at the FCC are nice enough. But they aren't very proactive. They don't sit around monitoring the airwaves listening for violations. They respond to complaints. Even at that, unless public safety is directly affected, you pretty much have to feed them the information on a silver platter. And if you do that, don't expect them to jump right on it.

-2 or -4? I always thought the quads look biatchin'. Especially because the designers were smart enough so that the ZSU can be used in a ground fire mode as well. Which would be a drag if you were downrange.

InternetSecurityGuard:Many of modern drones use spread spectrum transmissions for the control links. Very difficult to completely jam without the right equipment. Several kilowatts of broad band noise in the right frequency band directed at the aircraft would likely make them want to operate it elsewhere.

Or to follow up with a large-scale bombardment of the area in question.

As for bringing them down, some of the more sophisticated devices are set up with a fail safe to return to a specific set of coordinates in the event of a loss of the control link. So interrupting the link is likely to just run them off.

If they really wanted to be nasty, deploy weaponry. Effectively, the person screwing with the signal just gave the instruction to kill innocent people.It is unlikely that someone would get caught unless they were stupid enough to brag about it or someone rats them out. The folks at the FCC are nice enough. But they aren't very proactive. They don't sit around monitoring the airwaves listening for violations. They respond to complaints. Even at that, unless public safety is directly affected, you pretty much have to feed them the information on a silver platter. And if you do that, don't expect them to jump right on it.

Given the expense of the drones, the FCC would be the least of the worries. That, and I'd think that they'd hand a nice and tidy sum to people that cooperate with finding, prosecuting, and convicting the people that caused the interference and/or damage.

The actual ordinance is hilarious, starting off with inventing the concept of a municipality having a "sovereign airspace":

An ordinance to defend the sovereign airspace of the Town of Deer Trail, Colorado [...]

And working up to the "Supremacy clause", the concept that the federal constitution, statutes, and U.S. treaties override state law and lower levels of municipalities, which they handle by declaring it is exactly the opposite of what it says.

Further, the unsolicited or unwanted incursion of any unmanned aerial vehicle into the airspace of the Town of Deer Trail, represents an unlawful attack from a belligerent foreign power. Whether such incursion into the Town of Deer Trail airspace is committed on the part of any government entity or a non-government or corporate actor, each incursion of an unmanned aerial vehicle shall be considered an act of war against the sovereignty of the town and its citizens.

SwiftFox:And working up to the "Supremacy clause", the concept that the federal constitution, statutes, and U.S. treaties override state law and lower levels of municipalities, which they handle by declaring it is exactly the opposite of what it says.

Which means they have to accept being prosecuted & convicted for downing US Government drones or accept Detroit's cancellation of the bankruptcy.

People should be taking advantage of the general lawlessness around low-flying aircraft to build and fly their own drones, instead of shooting them down. Put enough consumer drones in the air and the government will have to allow for personal drones. Drones are the new guns.

rka:hubiestubert: hardinparamedic: And to think, here I've been thinking that shooting at an aircraft, especially with the intent to shoot it down, has been a federal crime since we've had aviation laws on the book.

It's going to be funny when some nutjob decides to try to do that, and either has it crash into a house and kill someone, or has the bullet come down right into a kid's head. Not ha-ha funny, but "Dumbass" funny.

Or starts a forest fire that consumes a fair chunk of timber land. Yeah, that's going to make these folks SUPER popular...

Deer Trail is in the eastern plains of Colorado. No trees. Even North Dakotans drive through and go "God, this place looks desolate."

Most of the state has these sorts of town on Ignore.

My experience in Colorado is pretty much confined to the Mesa Verde/Durango region. Pretty country, and a lot of farms both legal and sometimes "recreational." Overall, nice folks. Still like Mancos, if only for The Columbine and the horse hitches for the local ranchers...

SwiftFox:The actual ordinance is hilarious, starting off with inventing the concept of a municipality having a "sovereign airspace":

An ordinance to defend the sovereign airspace of the Town of Deer Trail, Colorado [...]

And working up to the "Supremacy clause", the concept that the federal constitution, statutes, and U.S. treaties override state law and lower levels of municipalities, which they handle by declaring it is exactly the opposite of what it says.

Further, the unsolicited or unwanted incursion of any unmanned aerial vehicle into the airspace of the Town of Deer Trail, represents an unlawful attack from a belligerent foreign power. Whether such incursion into the Town of Deer Trail airspace is committed on the part of any government entity or a non-government or corporate actor, each incursion of an unmanned aerial vehicle shall be considered an act of war against the sovereignty of the town and its citizens.

I believe that the colloquial term for what you were going for is "good luck with that"...

mccallcl:People should be taking advantage of the general lawlessness around low-flying aircraft to build and fly their own drones, instead of shooting them down. Put enough consumer drones in the air and the government will have to allow for personal drones. Drones are the new guns.

Or, maybe the government can have drones, and the public can have "right-to-privacy kinetic interceptors.."

When I see laws like this and laws like raising the age limit for buying guns in a single county, I see a nation that is grappling with problems that it is too damn lazy or too stupid to know how to fix effectively.

On the surface, it's cute and funny, but when you look a little deeper, it becomes kind of sad.

SpiderQueenDemon:This reminds me of the time my obnoxious vegan friend put a whole shiatload of Styrofoam deer sculptures she'd made with packages of what she considered delicious nonperishable vegan food and an 'isn't this nicer?' note in their hollow bellies into the forest the day before the first day of hunting season.

Yeah, that's pretty funny. The food is what takes it over the line from activism into trolling.

hubiestubert:So, they want pay folks to shoot down drones, that their tax dollars fund, with funds raised by local taxes? Sounds like a fool proof, fiscally prudent plan...

This

hardinparamedic:And to think, here I've been thinking that shooting at an aircraft, especially with the intent to shoot it down, has been a federal crime since we've had aviation laws on the book.

It's going to be funny when some nutjob decides to try to do that, and either has it crash into a house and kill someone, or has the bullet come down right into a kid's head. Not ha-ha funny, but "Dumbass" funny.

hubiestubert:hardinparamedic: And to think, here I've been thinking that shooting at an aircraft, especially with the intent to shoot it down, has been a federal crime since we've had aviation laws on the book.

It's going to be funny when some nutjob decides to try to do that, and either has it crash into a house and kill someone, or has the bullet come down right into a kid's head. Not ha-ha funny, but "Dumbass" funny.

Or starts a forest fire that consumes a fair chunk of timber land. Yeah, that's going to make these folks SUPER popular...

I've been there, it's more likely to start a brush fire than anything else but even then the brush is sort of sparse...on a side note I got drunk at the bar pictured in the Wikipedia article once. Good times.

vygramul:Benjimin_Dover: vygramul: "The FAA doesn't have the power to make a law," he said.

The ignorance on which part of the government makes laws in this thread is hitting new highs.

Not compared to the ignorance that is displayed by someone who thinks that congress would have to pass a new law in order to authorize the FAA to bring serious shiat down on someone who shot at a drone.

They are both pretty much near the bottom of the mental scale. It would be like comparing 5 degrees Kelvan and 10 degrees Kelvan and claiming that one is colder than the other.

Benjimin_Dover:vygramul: Benjimin_Dover: vygramul: "The FAA doesn't have the power to make a law," he said.

The ignorance on which part of the government makes laws in this thread is hitting new highs.

Not compared to the ignorance that is displayed by someone who thinks that congress would have to pass a new law in order to authorize the FAA to bring serious shiat down on someone who shot at a drone.

They are both pretty much near the bottom of the mental scale. It would be like comparing 5 degrees Kelvan and 10 degrees Kelvan and claiming that one is colder than the other.

That would be like laughing and saying the FAA DOES pass laws, as opposed to laughing at someone being stupid to begin with.